Thursday 24th March: The last couple of days - From Nice to Worse

Like all humans, I'm always annoyed and terrified when people say 'I've good news and bad news.' It scares the living bumjuice out of me. Because whatever people will say, the most important relevant and life-changing thing, obviously, is always the shit thing. Beats whatever good news hands down nearly all the time. Not just that, the bad thing is usually SO bad, that its badness needs to be cushioned to soften the blow. It just is that bad. So now, since I have failed to post a blog every single day (for reasons of business and, well, you'll see), this will be a bullet points-based survey of GOOD and BAD things going on in my life since Sunday.


GOOD

In our weekly chat on skype, my mum had told me she had gone to IKEA to buy a picture frame, so she could hang up one of the posters of the Top Banana comedy night (you know, the one with the review) in the stairway at home. She stole it after the gig, after jumping up and down every time she saw my name on some paper in the streets of Brighton. This was such a genuinely sweet gesture, I didn't really know what to say about it at the time. Come to think of it, I still don't. So: thanks again! :-)

I saw a fox in the garden. A living one, curled up and asleep on the grass. The cat, who normally makes its home on top of the scary shed had moved to the wall at the back of the neighbours' garden. My house mate was distinctly unimpressed, though. In London, she said, they were all over the place. A pest even. Disgusting animals. I don't care. Foxes are ace.

OK, it's already going down the 'yes, but'-road on the second one in the list. I am aware of that. But it will get far worse, that's my promise to all you misery-lovers out there. You know who you are, laughing at that man, crying in that corner, you.

I eventually went to the Uni Library in a feeble attempt to get some reading done. I ended up writing the last blog, in a corner with some coffee. I love libraries. As a child I used to have a kind of secret spot where I could hide with some books. I finally have the same thing in the Sussex library. I am telling no-one where it is. You shall not know of it! Wha! I am so evil. If self-defeating.
I was reading Freud (you have to, don't you) in that lovely corner of mine, until it got dark and all the lights started to go out around me, one by one. I played with the idea of just falling asleep there and not going back home, but soon, my innate rationality took over, and I left. And it did look slightly terrifying. I have not once had to spend an entire night in the library (it is possible, so I might) but with all the movement-sensitive lights going out one by one, leaving me in total darkness, I felt, you know, not that great.


On Monday morning, I was awoken by a buzzing noise. But not my phone. A huge bumblebee had decided to sleep next to my head, and I made that stupid -whahiaeheiyaheya- sound racist 5-year olds make when pretending to be indians (as in cowboys AND ____, I'm not mental). Eventually, I got a newspaper, made the insect crawl on top of it and (after it fell off a couple of times, I'm not sure about its current mental state) let it fly out into the wonderfully bright morning sky.

Btw: if you're going to see any comedian in the near future, go and see Nick Helm. He was amazing at I.O.U. on Monday night. Through my sleepless nights, my one source of happiness has been his voice singing the sentence 'He makes you look fat' over and over and over in my tired brain. You could replace the phrase: 'one source of happiness' with 'the incessant shouty maddening repetitive draining refrain bouncing around my cortex for a full night' and it still works. But I do agree that's more my fault than his. The man is amazing.

I had a gig on Wednesday night in Camden. This went quite well, even though very few people were there. But I nearly didn't do it. Luckily, Doctor Theatre was there to help out. But when I got home, he had left me. What am I talking about?

BAD

Yes. I'm ill. I only fell asleep at around 6 last night. I have not spoken today, apart from whispering a bit when I absolutely needed to. Otherwise, this is what I've looked like for the past 3 days:

Yeah. Good, isn't it? That's the kind of look I'm going for. I have decided to throw artistic ambitions to the wind and make a fortune starring in miserable-wonderful adverts. What am I talking about? You know, the adverts where there's two people, one person has an absolutely atrocious life, because they're fundamentally shit as human beings while the other person would be as winning as Charlie Sheen having his balls rubbed by the concept of fortuitousness.* This is all well, good and understood, but here's where it gets tricky. The one defining difference between the infinite misery-jumper (© Chris Morris, 1997) and Charlie Sheen's testes is that one product. If only life was that easy, the post-ironic consumer sighs, and willingly buys into their shit. But hey, who's to blame. It's clearly me, the one without the product. So that's why I'm practicing my sad, unattainable-product-face for Hollywood advert work. But after 10 years of success, I would finally be happy and healthy and rich myself, making me unsuitable for these parts, so I could never work again and by some strange contractual agreement, failures that have become winners, have to pay back all the money they made as failures, which automatically renders them failures again, but without the money, grand mansion or love. Better stay where I am I suppose. 

* Who says all Charlie Sheen jokes have been done before? Boom-boom-booyah!

But no. I've been feeling pretty horrible since Tuesday, where I had either a very intense and sudden onset of flu or an allergic reaction to something or other. It was at work, my left eye felt puffy and looked red, my nose was running, and I generally felt quite disgusting. Apart from that, the work was quite intense and very hard. As a result, the otherwise genuinely lovely boss asked me just to change my attitude and think positively. I suppose he was right. But it does always worry me when people talk about positive thinking as a tool or device. Especially in the workplace. Annoyingly, Barbara Ehrenreich was, at the RSA, far more eloquent about the subject than I can be: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

I do always get a nasty taste in my mouth when I hear phrases like: You just have to believe.*  Do you know what I mean? But then again, I am ill, and already had a pretty nasty taste in my mouth to begin with.

* N.B. these italics are not mine. They're already there in those people's voices. I don't know how they do it either. But they do.

All this makes it seem likely that, although some parts of the last couple of days have been incredibly lovely, the negative will still outweigh the positive. If you say that this is just a problem with my attitude I will slap you.

But still, after all that anger, I got this card this morning. It's from my mum, and she sent it just because she thought I'd deserved it and because she loves me.

It made me happy, that's all.

Just a bit, mind, no immediate danger to my professional miserablism.

But still. Life is nice. On balance.
Love you all!


-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

If you've been affected (or afflicted) by any of the issues in this frankly manic-depressive blog entry, please contact your local GP. I'm making more lemsip (I have fully integrated now, I think). X